Thursday, February 02, 2006

News of the Day (February 2)

From the China Freedom Blog Alliance: Between Heaven and Earth picks up on the India-is-not-Communist China theme (and even highlights this quarter's post on the subject) with an excellent piece by William Pesek (Standard, HK). Democratic China echoes our question on the President's State of the Union speech. One Free Korea weighs in on the speech's reaction in Korea, the Bank of China indictments (fourth item), South Korean presidential hopeful Lee Myung Bak's comments on human rights in the Stalinist North, the failure of the South's dovish incumbent administration, and Japan's more robust response to SNK.

Congressmen rip American tech firms for aiding Communist crackdown: The Congressional Human Rights Caucus took rhetorical aim at Microsoft, Yahoo, Cisco and Google for having "caved in to Beijing for the sake of profits" (Representative Tom Lantos, quoted by the BBC).

More on Google's surrender: James V. DeLong, of the Progress & Freedom Foundation, pens the Ignorant Comment of the Day in a hideous TCS Daily column (Hat-tip Ramesh Ponnuru, National Review Online's Corner). Ying Ma, American Enterprise Institute, comes a close second for the dubious honor in NRO. TCS Daily host Jim Glassman also weighs in.

Canada file: Nortel has agreed to "set up a global joint venture to develop solutions for ultra-broadband access" (United Press International via Washington Times) with Huawei Technologies - the folks that built a fiber-optic network for Saddam Hussein to integrate his air defenses (also reporting: Toronto Star). Meanwhile, Jason Loftus, Epoch Times, examines the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal's smackdown of the anti-Falun Gong Ottawa Senior Chinese Cultural Association.

On the satellite states: The video of the Stalinist assault on a woman who tried to escape SNK (second item) was aired by Japanese television (Daily NK). Former Stalinist prisoner Ahn Hyok gives his second installment on life in a Stalinist prison (third item) to Daily NK. Dovish South Korea (OFK, call your office!) continues to play the see-no-evil game on Stalinist counterfeiting (BBC). Jing-dong Yuan, Ph.D., of the Monterey Institute of International Studies, has a long, but weak, piece on Communist China's ties to Iran - a piece which seems to completely ignore the military ties between the two regimes - in China Brief.

More on Communist China and the rest of the world: A Falun Gong practitioner's lawsuit against Guangdong Party boss Zhang Dejiang has reached the New South Wales Supreme Court (Epoch Times), while a lawsuit against Australian Foreign Affairs Minister Alexander Downer for blocking a Falun Gong protest at the Communist Embassy in Canberra reached the ACT Supreme Court (Epoch Times). Jay Nordlinger, National Review Online - second item, is pleased to see anti-Communist protestors at Davos. John Nania, Epoch Times, laments the Falun Gong's travails in San Francisco. Last but far from least, Stephen Blank, of the U.S. Army War College, notes in China Brief that Communist China's biggest obstacle to the vast energy reserves of Central Asia is none other than its chief military supplier, Russia.

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